There’s all number of mixed messages in the Japanese sales charts this week, which includes the debut of the Wii U and a landmark achievement for the 3DS.

The 3DS has been dominating Japanese sales all year, where the price drop and release of prominent new games last autumn had a much more extreme effect on sales than in the West. Japan has favoured handheld over home consoles for years, and this has allowed the 3DS to surpass the the PlayStation 3’s entire userbase in less than two years.

As of this week lifetime sales of the 3DS in Japan stand at 8,799,378, compared to 8,716,260 for the PlayStation 3.

Japan is the only country that releases weekly software and hardware sales figures, which is frustrating as the vastly different tastes in games and hardware make it impossible to draw any real parallels between success there and elsewhere in the world.

However, the success or failure of consoles in Japan does still have a strong influence on the support local publishers and developers give to a format. So based on the figures below you can expect a steady stream of 3DS games in the future, but continued problems for the PS Vita.

The fate of the Wii U is less certain, with its debut this week coming in at 308,142 according to regular chart compiler Media Create (and 308,570 according to rival Enterbrain). That’s almost 64,000 less than for the Wii’s debut, and less than the 3DS and PS Vita as well – although given the shrinking market for home console games in Japan that’s not much of a surprise.

Unlike in the West a number of Wii U games did make it into the top 10, in fact the entire top 25 (yes, 25) is filled exclusively with games for either the Wii U, 3DS or original Wii. The only exception is the important one, with Sega’s Yakuza 5 easily topping the charts with an impressive debut of over a third of a million copies.

Mixed messages indeed, and it’ll take many more weekly charts before the fate of the Wii U becomes clear either in Japan or elsewhere…